Hard News by Russell Brown

If you're wondering about what I've said about the standard and health risks, I wrote it up in more detail last October when the 1.5mcg standard was proposed.

Key paragraph from an ESR analysis commissioned by MoH as part of the standards process:

The highest calculated exposures to MA are those experienced by children under 2 years of age, due to their frequent contact with household surfaces, their low body weight, and their hand-to-mouth behaviour. However, even these exposures, using conservative exposure assumptions, fall several orders of magnitude below prescribed therapeutic daily MA doses for children as young as 3 years of age.

In other words, the possible dose to the most vulnerable infant from touching the walls of a house “contaminated” with meth is vastly lower than the daily therapeutic dose of methamphetamine (sold as Desoxyn) given to a three year-old to treat ADHD.

A Standards-setting committee stacked with rogue testing companies - what could possibly go wrong?

And lo, the standard has just been published.

It's obviously not in the interests of a landlord to perform a test - I certainly wouldn't. Property owners should always be wary of creating a paper trail that impacts their LIM or creates something you are bound to disclose - for instance, if you have an issue with neighbours, don't put in writing if at all avoidable.

zero-tolerance policy

I have one of those too. For money grubbing fuckwittery.
Eat shit ray white.

For a couple of hundred bucks this would be a perfect way for a dissatisfied tenant to get back at a landlord. But if landlords aren't going to test and a tenant is concerned about real contamination, it's an option. It would seem to be in everybody's interest to have a meaningful standard of contamination.

The problem is that isn't in everyone's interest to have a meaningful standard. It's not in the interests of the testing companies, or the clean-up companies, or the companies taking a cut of the proceedings (Ray White Real Estate, for example).

It would seem to be in everybody's interest to have a meaningful standard of contamination.

Yes. Sadly this is not it.

The Drug Foundation Twitter posted this shot of the standards committee today.

I guess you could argue Hill Laboratories, who make money from the industry, but – unlike the others – actually have some expertise. Well, okay, maybe also Forensic and Industrial. But MethSolutions, who've played a major role in this whole debacle? FFS.

MethSolutions

Great name, I presume they make a vape-able form of the drug?

Isn’t the testing between tenancies being driven as much by the Insurance Companies as anything esle?

I think they require that you prove the contamination occurred during the period of cover in order to claim against your policy

1.5 µg, per 100cm^2, of wall, that didn't come off with a quick wipe.

Therapeutic doses are 10-25 mg per day, or 10000 to 25000 µg per day. Illicit use is higher still up over 60 mg per day for heavy users, or 60000 µg.

So to get any affect, off that, you'd want to lick 66 m^2 of wall, and to really bug out you'd be up over 500 m^2 of wall. In some way that magically attracted meth and also replaced it so you could do it again tomorrow.

It really seems like numbers under 10 µg per 100 cm^2 are just being, uh, greedy might be a word. If meth doesn't actually stick to skin much better than wall, any numbers under 100 µg don't even make sense, but of course you'd never be able to find that much meth anywhere, so meth cleaning companies wouldn't need to exist.

Try a cloth.

Ah, but the minimum level is decided by the Won't somebody think of the children? factor … hence the effective dose is much smaller — let's say divided by 100 to scale for order-of-magnitude mass ratio, so 100µg/ 100cm^2 = 1 mg/ m^2. And everything sticks to infants, apparently…

Try a cloth.

Smoked, snorted or injected :?)

And everything sticks to infants, apparently…

Have you had one? It's essentially true... :D

It really seems like numbers under 10 µg per 100 cm^2 are just being, uh, greedy might be a word. If meth doesn’t actually stick to skin much better than wall, any numbers under 100 µg don’t even make sense, but of course you’d never be able to find that much meth anywhere, so meth cleaning companies wouldn’t need to exist.

At which point, let us recall that until recently, the Tenancy Tribunal was ordering that that if any part of a dwelling tested over 0.5, the place could only be entered by people in hazmat suits. And could not be persuaded otherwise, even by scientists. That’s how screamingly stupid this got.

Try a cloth.

A much underrated solution. Ditto: a coat of paint.